Lady Optimistic

Check this out, my dear…

This was sent out as the motivational video of the week from my 10-year-old son’s basketball coach.

I love this!  Completely.  A little bit of a rush for a 10-year-old, but hey, you gotta start somewhere.  And little Iron Man is actually quite emotionally ready for something like this.  Mostly because he isn’t a sheep.  He’s a quite lion.  Or maybe more of alone wolf.

But this post isn’t about Iron Man.  Its about Tink.

So Tink is having a tough time.  And you know what I realized,  – well actually I’ve know this, but hadn’t quite articulated it to myself until just now – she is a lion.  I mean Tink is a LION.

Now, think about lions for a moment.  King of the beasts.  Head honcho of his surroundings.  Gorgeous.  Flashy.  Showy…  Billowing mane…  But who does all the work?  The lioness.  That’s right…  she is the hunter, she provides the food, she births the cubs, she teaches them to hunt for themselves…  SHE is the one that dominates her surroundings.  But she is not what you see when you think Lion.

And that makes me think about the girls’ leadership class Tink and I just took.  It was a class to help girls identify, understand, own and speak their truths.  A class to help understand their feelings and their truths and effectively express them.  I have been doing a lot of research on this.  This is a really difficult thing because woman aren’t appreciated when their truth is raw, difficult, messy, forceful, compelling…

The video is correct.  Every word of it.  Its powerful.  Humans are powerful.

But how would this motivation be received if it were narrated by women?  And how would it sound?  Would it motivate?  If women used the same power in their voices would this video be as well received?  How would a woman have to deliver it differently to be taken seriously?

Teaching a lioness to be a woman is the hardest thing in the world.  I’m probably doing a terrible job.  But I can’t give up.  I won’t give up.  I must also be the lioness.